President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday blamed California’s Democratic governor for the failure to contain fires engulfing parts of the Los Angeles area, turning a still-evolving natural disaster into a political opportunity and accusing the state’s government of letting environmental policies run amok.
In a post on his social media site, Mr. Trump mocked Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling him “incompetent” and claiming that the governor had blocked an infusion of water to Southern California because of concern about the impact on a threatened fish.
“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Now the ultimate price is being paid.”
The post was vintage Trump, who rarely passes up an opportunity to blame natural disasters on his political enemies. It was also a return to his denunciations of California, which has been a frequent target of his ire.
In 2019, Mr. Trump accused San Francisco of allowing used needles from drug users to be washed into the ocean, saying the city was in “serious violation” of environmental rules and demanding that officials “clean it up.”
“We can’t have our cities going to hell,” he said.
That Christmas, Mr. Trump tweeted: “Governor Gavin N has done a really bad job on taking care of the homeless population in California. If he can’t fix the problem, the Federal Govt. will get involved!” The next year, Mr. Trump blamed Mr. Newsom’s administration for failing to do enough to prevent forest fires, which were then raging through the state.
“They’re starting again in California,” Mr. Trump said at a rally. “I said, you got to clean your floors, you got to clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
Mr. Trump’s angry commentary on Wednesday about the latest fires came even as Southern California residents were fleeing three separate blazes. At least two people have been confirmed to have died from the fires, and the authorities were warning the area’s residents to be ready to evacuate their homes at a moment’s notice.
President Biden, who was in the Los Angeles area for a previously scheduled event, visited a fire station and was briefed by the state’s fire officials.
“We’re doing anything and everything and as long as it takes to contain these fires to make sure you get back to normal,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s going to be a hell of a long way. It’s going to take time. It’s astounding what’s happening.”
Mr. Trump took a different approach.
In his social media post, the president-elect called the governor “Gavin Newscum” and said he had refused to sign a declaration that would have allowed more water to flow into Southern California.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Mr. Trump said.
The governor’s press office responded with a statement on social media.
“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration — that is pure fiction,” the statement on X said. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
Mr. Newsom posted throughout the day about the resources California is deploying to fight the fires and joined Mr. Biden for a briefing from fire officials, but he did not mention Mr. Trump. In a news conference on Tuesday night — before Mr. Trump’s social media posts — the governor urged restraint.
“My message to the incoming administration, and I’m not here to play any politics, is please don’t play any politics,” he said.
Debates in California over water have a long history. Most of the state’s water comes from Northern California, which receives more rain and snow each year than Southern California, as has been the case so far this winter. But most of that water is used by Central Valley farmers and Southern California residents, setting up a perennial battle over how much water the state and the federal government should send south.
For water purposes, the conflict is over whether to divert some water to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay to save the smelt and other ecosystems or to send it to farmers in the Central Valley and urban users like Los Angeles city residents. Growers in Southern California get much of their water from a different system through the Colorado River.
That battle has generated years of litigation over the fate of the fish. The delta smelt is a federally threatened species and a California endangered species, so courts have often dictated how much water the state can pump south and how much it can divert to the ocean.
In 2019, during his first term, Mr. Trump pushed changes that would have diverted more water to growers in the Central Valley. His interior secretary was David Bernhardt, who was a lobbyist in Washington for Westlands Water District, a big player in the valley that delivers water to farmers.
Those changes were opposed by environmentalists who expressed concern about the impact on fish like salmon and smelt.
The Biden administration, working with Mr. Newsom, backed a different plan when Mr. Biden entered office that allowed water to flow but with more efforts to protect fish.
In his post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”
But it is not clear that the diversion of water that Mr. Trump proposed would have affected the explosion of fires in the Los Angeles area this week, or the ability of firefighters to battle it.
Water supplies have been strained in Pacific Palisades, where some firefighters connected hoses to hydrants on Wednesday only to find them empty. And some firefighting planes were grounded as the fires erupted on Tuesday — but officials have said that was because of high winds and smoke, not because of a lack of water.
Officials also disputed Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the dispute over the smelt and other fish hampered the firefighting efforts this week. The water wars have largely focused on the need for irrigation by farmers, not on the use of water by firefighters.
Kevin Yamamura contributed reporting.
